They Never Said What We Lost
by valleyofash
Summary: The result of an attempt to recreate the serum that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America has left Finley Hayes without a family, a home, or anywhere to go but with the organization her father was working against. Can Steve show her how to become a soldier when he's no longer sure what he's fighting for? Steve Rogers/OFC, post-Avengers but pre-TWS


**A/N: **I started writing this ages ago but was suffering from a horrible bout of writer's block and took down this chapter after finding myself wholly uninspired to write a second installation. But over a year later, I'd like to give it another try. Please leave a review if you would like to read more, constructive criticism greatly appreciated.

Note: the timeline is post-Avengers and pre-Winter Soldier.

**They Never Said What We Lost **by _Valley of Ash_

Chapter One

The wheelchair sat in the corner of the room, an oddly spectral presence. A few strands from a recently abandoned spider web swung in the breeze from the open window, stretched precariously between an armrest and the sill. Finley idly watched them from her seat on the wooden floor. As she thought about this, one of the strands abruptly broke away from the chair and was lost in the shadow it cast on the ground.

Finley looked away and stood up, still expecting her legs to collapse beneath her but they did not. She heard her father's footsteps approaching her room and a moment later he appeared in the doorway, disheveled silver hair illuminated by the muted sunlight.

"How are the old pegs working out?" he asked, a crooked grin on his weary face.

It took her a moment to realize he was referring to her legs, and she looked down in surprise, as if to check on them.

"Fine, dad," she said, smiling slightly back at him.

It was not the most convincing effort and she was sure he still detected a distrustful note in her voice, but he did not acknowledge it.

"Good, good," he nodded, glancing down at the dishtowel between his hands and twisting it absentmindedly.

There was a long pause and then he cleared his throat in a manner that signified he was about to either make an apology or remind her of how much he loved her. She was fairly certain it was the former. After years of living with a father who often seemed to have forgotten how to talk, she had learned to glean entire sentences from something as simple as a cough.

"I know you're still angry with me for what I did, and I understand. But I hope you can understand that I thought it's what you wanted. To have your independence back." He began, slowly bringing his flinty blue eyes to meet hers.

She held his gaze for a moment but found herself distracted by the new lines that had creased his face, like a map of tributaries beginning at his forehead and making their way across his weathered skin.

Seeing that she had no intention of agreeing to this statement, he went on.

"I know I should have asked you first, I know it now. I wish I had. But-" he stopped, his brow furrowing.

"Do you hear that?" he asked.

She nodded. The sound of heavy tires had been audible to her long ago but she had done her best to tune it out, trying to pay her best attention to her father's attempt at an apology. Looking worried, he ran to the window and anxiously peered out at the cracked, bone-dry piece of Arizona desert that served as their unused yard. He turned back to her, a stricken look on his face.

"They're here." He said, and somehow she knew immediately who he meant.

"S.H.I.E.L.D?" she asked, more to show that she understood than to confirm it.

"Finley, I'm not letting them take you," he told her, clasping her shoulders, his eyes burning into hers.

"What are we going to do?" she asked breathlessly, surprised to find that panic had already risen in her chest.

"You're going to run. And I'm going to make sure those bastards don't ever get their hands on any of my work."

"But how-" she began.

A speaker crackled to life outside and a deep voice shouted,

"Doctor Hayes, we know you're in there. Come out now with your hands over your head or we will have no choice but to bring you out by force."

"Finley, I love you. I love you so much, don't you ever forget it. And I'm so sorry for everything." Her father whispered, his voice cracking slightly as he reached up and brushed a lock of dark hair behind her ear. "Now go!" he yelled, pushing her away with more force than she had expected.

For a moment, she stared at him helplessly, unable to move. Then she took off through the house, dashing down the back hall and pushing her way through the old screen door into the blistering heat. Her legs were unsteady at first as she made her way over the dry ground, her bare feet creating little clouds of red dust wherever she stepped. Without warning, the air split and she was thrown forward by an unseen force, dirt spraying the back of her legs like tiny bee stings.

Pushing herself up by the palms of her hands, she stood and looked back at the pile of rubble that had been her home just moments before. All that was left in its place were scattered debris engulfed in flames, smoke rapidly rising up towards the clear blue sky. And finally, as she had expected them to on so many occasions since the injection, her legs did collapse beneath her as she screamed for a father who could no longer hear her.

Through her blurred vision, she saw three men running towards the fire, rifles held loosely by their sides like extra limbs. She could still outrun them, she thought, as she knelt there on the hard ground, covered in dust. But she did not get up. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a familiar item just several feet away, tossed out of the house by the strength of the explosion.

The metal skeleton of her wheelchair seemed to stare at her resentfully from where it lay. She wished, as she had countless times in the past twenty-four hours, that she had never been relieved from it. That none of it had happened.

And that was how the S.H.I.E.L.D officers found her: reaching for the remains of her former life as the ash fell down around them like rain.

"You wanted to see me, director?" Steve Rogers asked, stepping into the spacious office.

Nick Fury glanced up from the heap of files on his desk, his eye patch and ever-present leather trench coat looking incredibly out of place in the otherwise very conservative room.

"Captain Rogers," he acknowledged, gesturing to the empty chair in front of the desk.

Steve took it with a nod of thanks, and stared expectantly at the S.H.I.E.L.D director.

"I hope you haven't gotten your hopes up too much about receiving a mission as exciting as the last one," Fury said, shuffling the papers back into a perfectly neat stack.

"Actually sir, I hope it's nowhere near as exciting as that," Steve replied honestly.

"Well, you aren't going to be saving the world again right this moment, but I'm not going to have you up in trees rescuing kittens, either. You won't need to do much more than talk for this one." Fury told him.

"Talk?" Steve questioned, his brow furrowing slightly as he recalled his decidedly mortifying stint as a war bonds salesman for the army.

"Doesn't require a script, and there are no dance numbers," Fury assured him, smiling slightly.

Steve's shoulders slumped slightly in relief.

"I need your help persuading someone to join our team." Fury continued, without elaborating.

"Why me?" Steve asked, confused.

"Well, I'm not much of a 'people person' and it's much more likely that you could talk her into joining us than I could. Additionally, you two have something very unique in common that makes you the perfect representative," Fury said, taking a sheet of paper off the top of his stack and passing it to Steve.

He scanned it quickly. It was a file on a young woman named Finley Hayes, a light haired, reserved looking girl with a thoroughly unremarkable background. Puzzled, he looked up at Fury, urging him to explain.

"Her father worked for S.H.I.E.L.D about twenty-two years ago. He was one of our best scientists and was part of a team responsible for attempting to replicate the serum that was used on you. But he went rogue after discovering some of the plans for our advanced weaponry, and tried to eradicate all the research his team had put together so far. Apparently he didn't like the direction we were going. Thought we were inviting warfare instead of preventing it. We let him go though never took him off our radar, and he moved out to the middle of nowhere in Nevada. Guess he thought that was inconspicuous enough that we'd leave him alone. When Finley was seven, she and her mom were in a car accident that killed the mom and left her daughter paralyzed from the waist down. And that's when he began experimenting again; presumably without knowledge we were watching him. Fifteen years passed before he finally managed to create a version of the serum. Seems he used it on Finley without her consent – not as though she could have put up much of a fight in a wheelchair – and in doing so may have created the second ever supersoldier." Fury started.

"Wait, so there's someone else like me?" Steve asked, startled.

"Well, we aren't sure exactly how her abilities measure up to yours but we plan on putting her through a series of tests to determine just how the serum enhanced her. But one thing's for sure, she's no longer paralyzed." Fury continued. "When we realized this, I sent a team out to bring both Hayes and his daughter in but he couldn't stand the thought of us getting our hands on the girl or the formula. Told her to go and blew the whole damn house up, taking himself and his work with it. The girl survived though, got far enough away from the blast before it went off. We have her in our custody now. As you can imagine, she's not feeling very friendly towards us considering what's just happened. But I want you to see if you can get through to her. Convince her that we're the good guys." Fury told him.

"And are we?" Steve asked quietly.

"I can't speak for everyone when I say this, but if you aren't one of the good guys, nobody is, Captain. And that's why I'm asking you to do this." Fury replied.

He sounded weary.

"But what if I can't convince her?" Steve questioned.

"I'll put it this way. Either she joins us by her own choice or she comes with us involuntarily. We can't risk letting her go; even if she only possesses half of your ability she'd still be a formidable adversary for us. And I'd sure as hell rather have a willing soldier on our side than one we had to force into joining us. So do try your hardest." Fury said.

"I'll do my best, director." Steve affirmed with a nod of his head, taking the order as his dismissal.

And he would. Though he had absolutely no idea how he would be able to convince her to join an organization he barely believed in anymore.


End file.
